Fareham Council followed Portsmouth, Southampton, Reading and others last month in stating that it wanted all of its activities to be carbon neutral by 2030. Portsmouth City Council has been on this path for a while, installing solar panels on schools and other public buildings, housing blocks and other properties throughout the city since 2016.This month, Portsmouth became the proud owner of the UK's largest operational Tesla Powerwall installation.
But what is a Powerwall, should you care and what does it mean for local landlords?
Lets start by explaining the 4 Steps To Carbon Neutrality
The challenge with older houses is to make them as energy efficient as new houses without sealing them up and risking rot and other problems related to lack of ventilation – but more on that in later articles. Until then, just remember that we need to lose as little energy from our homes as possible.
For most existing houses, the fly in the ointment is the gas boiler. Some figures show that up to 28% of the UK's carbon and pollution is generated by gas boilers – so you can rest assured that their time is numbered but…..
There is an alternative which says we use north sea wind power to produce hydrogen from water and then we replace natural gas with hydrogen, city by city (in the same way that we converted to natural gas from coal gas with a phased change of burners and flues throughout the 60's and 70's), but that currently seems unlikely.
More likely is that we will just replace our gas central heating systems with air source heat pumps which are powered by electricity.At present, this does not add up as gas is cheaper and also, it is not a straight swap as current heat pumps are good at producing water at lower temperatures – so think more radiators or larger radiators but that will change as the planned 30Gw of wind power comes onstream and manufacturers improve the performance (and price) of heat pumps.
Timing is interesting. In the announced '10 point green plan' this month, the Prime Minister stated that gas boilers in new houses would be phased out by 2022. There was obviously intense lobbying by the gas industries and house builders, including very publicly Persimmon Homes, as when the policy documentation was released 2 days later, this objective had been removed.
So for most of us, the time is probably not right to throw away our gas boilers – but don't hold your breath and don't expect to be buying any new ones after some point between 2025 and 2030, given that the move to carbon neutral seems to be accelerating and with the UK based global climate change conference next year, this is definitely an area where political capital can be made from ambitious commitments.
Martin began his landlord journey 15 years ago, while working in an international role for a global telecommunications company. Since retiring he has extended his portfolio, which he manages with his wife, but has always focussed on the ‘small student HMO’ sector preferring to offer homes in the community for small groups to the more common ‘pack them in and take the money’ mentality. He has chaired the PDPLA for the past 6 years and has overseen the Associations transition from small local self-help group to a much larger and more professional institution which is recognised and listened to nationally. Alongside his PDPLA role, he also has leadership roles in a number of other local organisations – bringing his unique perspective, driving for change and increased use of technology while respecting the history that brought us here.
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